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"Where can I get a Triton-1 installed?"
Jake's mother typed the question into her search bar. Jake sat slumped on the couch beside her, scrolling listlessly through his phone. The wallpaper on his screen was the Triton-1 logo, the red flame motif against a dark background, the brand mark that had become globally recognizable over the past two months.
His mother scrolled through the search results.
"There's a fitting center in New York. And one in Los Angeles. And listings for several other cities."
But every one of those results predated the suspension order. After the federal compliance review had been triggered, every Prism Sciences fitting center in the country had ceased operations. The search results were a list of locked doors.
Then a new answer caught her eye. It had been posted two days ago and had already accumulated a large number of upvotes.
"If you want a Triton-1 installed right now, here's a complete guide. First, book a flight to Rivermont, the city where Prism Sciences is headquartered. When you land, you'll find taxis at the arrivals exit."
"Your first stop is Rivermont Central Hospital. You need an outpatient medical evaluation before a prosthetic can be fitted. The doctor will review your medical history and assess your physical and psychological readiness for the prosthetic. The evaluation report is usually issued within two hours."
"With that report in hand, take a taxi to the Prism Sciences fitting center. There will be taxis waiting outside the hospital. At the fitting center, present your evaluation report and explain that you've traveled for a fitting. They will be glad to help you. You can also ask the fitting center staff for lodging assistance. They can recommend nearby hotels."
"You don't need to worry about post-installation maintenance. Prism Sciences operates a global warranty program. Any prosthetic fitted at one of their centers can be serviced at any Prism Sciences fitting center or service center worldwide, regardless of where it was originally installed."
"Those are the main steps. Below are the details: how to communicate your destination to taxi drivers, how the hospital registration process works, currency exchange information, and more. Please read all the way through."
The guide was exhaustively thorough. It specified which window at the Rivermont airport currency exchange to use. It explained the hospital's registration and queuing process. It included photographs of both Rivermont Central Hospital and the Prism Sciences fitting center so travelers would recognize the buildings.
Anyone following the guide step by step could complete a prosthetic fitting without speaking the local language or having any prior familiarity with the city.
The level of detail was the giveaway. No casual traveler could have produced this. The guide had been written by someone with deep, current knowledge of Rivermont. Someone, in all likelihood, who worked for Prism Sciences.
The guide spread across the internet rapidly. Within days, every prospective Triton-1 customer in the country had seen it.
Flights to Rivermont sold out. Prosthetic candidates and their families bought every available seat.
Jake and his mother managed to secure two adjacent tickets.
When they boarded the plane, they discovered something. The cabin was full of people with hand and arm disabilities. Empty sleeves. Visible prosthetics of older designs. Wheelchairs at the gate.
The passengers looked at each other and exchanged small, knowing smiles.
Everyone on the flight was going to the same place, for the same reason.
Over the following days, the residents of Rivermont noticed something unusual.
There was a sudden surge of foreign visitors. Many of them had visible hand or arm disabilities. They tended to cluster in three places: Rivermont Central Hospital, the Prism Sciences fitting center, and the currency exchange counters at the major banks.
The Prism Sciences fitting center, which had seen its foot traffic decline as the initial launch rush faded, suddenly surged back to capacity. The lobby was packed every day, full of English-speaking visitors working through the fitting process. The atmosphere recalled the chaotic first days after the launch.
And the number of foreign visitors kept growing. There was no sign of it slowing.
A phenomenon this visible couldn't stay quiet for long.
Reporters picked up the story. It went to broadcast.
Television coverage showed foreign visitors (faces blurred for privacy) arriving at the Rivermont airport and immediately consulting their saved copies of the guide. The footage followed the process step by step.
First, the visitor approached a taxi and showed the driver the guide's Image One: a line of text reading "Take me to Rivermont Central Hospital."
At the hospital, the visitor showed the staff Image Two: "I need an outpatient evaluation for prosthetic fitting."
The audience watching the broadcast was, by the reporters' description, collectively stunned.
The internet reaction was immediate.
"Incredible. Look at Prism Sciences go."
"A guide this detailed had to be written by a Prism employee. No question."
"Confident version: drop the 'had to be.' It WAS a Prism employee."
"This is the first time I've seen foreign customers chase a product across an international border. I genuinely can't process it."
"Think about it from their side. Every person with a hand disability wants their hand back. That's the most fundamental demand there is. If I heard there was a prosthetic this good at a price I could afford, in another country, I would absolutely find a way to get there."
"This is what happens when your technology is genuinely ahead. Your competitor can pull every dirty trick available and it still doesn't matter, because the customers will walk through fire to reach you."
Across the border, in the country where the suspension order had been issued, the medical tourism surge was impossible to ignore.
The flights to Rivermont were full of the country's own citizens, hand-disabled customers traveling abroad with family escorts. The story had crossed back over from foreign coverage into domestic media. Television panels were discussing the phenomenon.
Helios pushed for a response. There wasn't one available.
The suspension order had no jurisdiction over Prism Sciences' operations in other countries. The agency couldn't order a foreign company to stop serving the agency's own citizens abroad.
If they tried, the logic would collapse immediately. It would be equivalent to demanding that a smartphone manufacturer check the nationality of every buyer and refuse to sell phones to citizens of a particular country. The premise was absurd on its face.
They couldn't forbid their own citizens from receiving prosthetics abroad, either. That was even more absurd. A government telling disabled citizens they were not allowed to get medical care in another country was not a policy any official wanted to defend in public.
And as for intercepting the prosthetics after installation: nobody was going to stand at the border and forcibly remove medical devices from disabled travelers. The footage of customers being ejected into a snowstorm had already done enough reputational damage. The footage of customs officers amputating people's prosthetic arms would end careers.
So the medical tourism continued, and the authorities looked the other way, and Helios's lobbyists ran out of moves.
During the entire period of the suspension order, Prism Sciences' fitting centers in the affected country never reopened.
They didn't need to.
Instead, Prism Sciences opened several additional service centers in the country, purely for warranty and maintenance support. The service centers weren't sales operations, so they didn't violate the suspension. They existed to support the growing population of customers who had traveled to Rivermont, gotten fitted, and come home with a working Triton-1 arm that occasionally needed a tune-up.
The suspension order, designed to choke Prism Sciences out of the market, had instead generated a stream of international medical tourists, weeks of positive press coverage, and an expansion of Prism Sciences' service footprint.
Helios had fired a weapon and watched it curve back around.